Here’s a little tidbit you may not know: In some jurisdictions, stun guns and tasers are more restricted than handguns. This bit of oddness (guns are clearly more lethal than tasers) is being challenged on Second Amendment grounds by people involved with the landmark Heller case that affirmed the right to bear arms as an individual one. We might be perplexed by the incongruity of banning something that’s not “as bad” as something else that’s not banned, but we can clear that illogic up by considering motives.
Consider some other examples. “Vaping,” aka “electronic cigarettes,” aka devices that deliver nicotine via motions that mimic the act of smoking cigarettes, is a far safer way for people to feed their nicotine habits than smoking itself. It’s not perfectly safe, but it is (despite some tendentious claims otherwise) both safer and cheaper than smoking itself. Anti-smoking crusaders, however, are apoplectic about its increasing popularity, and want it regulated or banned.
Marijuana is being legalized, slowly but surely, after 75+ years of stupidity, but it remains illegal in many jurisdictions, leading those who want to experience a cannabinoid high down far more dangerous paths.
Gambling is a “vice” that governments high and low either ban or allow only when they themselves make money. When fantasy sports betting, a form of gambling that (despite what politicians claim) involves a degree of skill, became popular, politicians’ prohibitionist proclivities emerged.
When President Obama commuted the sentences of 214 mostly non-violent drug offenders, social conservatives freaked out.
What do all of these have in common? An element of petulance. Every one of these examples involves individual liberty in the face of prohibition. Prohibitions were either knocked down or worked around, and the prohibitionists don’t like it.
Individuals in D.C. got restrictions on their gun rights lifted, but the prohibitionists didn’t want to give up so they kept tasers illegal.
Individuals who want to get their nicotine hits in public places found a workaround to smoking bans in e-cigarettes, but the prohibitionists don’t want to be around something that even looks like smoking, so they want vaping banned.
Individuals who want to get high have found ways around pot prohibition, even though those workarounds are far more dangerous than pot. Prohibitionists, rather than conceding they’ve lost the fight against pot, are content to let those people risk far greater harm to themselves just to satisfy their prohibitionist tendencies.
Individuals who want to spend their leisure dollars on gambling have found something more exciting than state lotteries, but prohibitionists and politicians can’t let them have their fun.
Individuals who were incarcerated by draconian laws born out of an utterly failed War on Drugs get a chance at having some semblance of a normal life rather than one behind bars, and prohibitionists are incensed that they’re not being punished to the full extent of some stupid laws that should be done away with.
All this is the petulance of sore losers. Considered in that regard, we now understand what seems illogical. The prohibitionists are still wrong, and they should be told so. Over and over again. Until they get it. Until they stop trying to ban consensual activities.
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